Posted on 10/30/2002 3:37:06 PM PST by yonif
The Truth about the USS Liberty By Yoni Freeman
In response to the presentation on Tuesday October 30th 2002 of the documentary “The Loss of Liberty” by the Council for the National Interest Connecticut, it is my duty to present the real facts concerning the Liberty incident.
The first question one should ask is who exactly are these documentary sponsors? Well after researching the organization on their website (http://www.cnionline.org/) I concluded that the Council for the National Interest is nothing more than an anti-Israeli organization which also shows tendencies of being anti-Semitic. Here are some excerpts from different Middle East articles, written by them, on their website:
1) "The State of Israel was founded 54 years ago to provide a "home" for a people who had been rejected, uprooted, tortured, maimed and expelled by Europe. Did any of us living then think that the Jews would do the same to their hosts in the "homeland," and reject, uproot, torture, maim and expel their Palestinian neighbors? Whole Palestinian villages have been destroyed without a trace -- so that those villagers who left them in 1948 would never have a village to return to at a later date. Why does this sound familiar? Victims have become victimizers?" http://rescuemideastpolicy.com/ads/ad_1.html
2) "ISRAEL AND PALESTINE: WHOSE EXISTENCE IS REALLY IN DANGER?" http://rescuemideastpolicy.com/ads/ad_2.html
3) "The State of Israel was founded 54 years ago to provide a “home” for a people who had been rejected, uprooted, tortured, maimed and expelled by Europe. Did anyone think that Jews would do the same to the Palestinian people who were already living there?" "From 1947-1949, Israel rejected, uprooted, tortured, maimed and expelled the Palestinian population. Israel destroyed over 415 Palestinian villages, along with their churches and mosques, so that the Palestinian villagers could not return. Once Jews were victims of these atrocities, but it is clear that the Jewish victims in Israel have become victimizers of the Palestinians." "In 1967, Israel invaded the rest of historical Palestine: the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza. The UN has repeatedly voted that Israel leave the Palestinian land and let the Palestinian people be free. Israel has refused, constantly violating international" "Discrimination and apartheid in Israel are striking. Christians and Muslims are not allowed to rent, buy or lease in 92% of Israel. Israel prohibits Palestinian Christians and Muslims from living in Jewish-only colonies." http://rescuemideastpolicy.com/ads/ad_3.html
4) "We the people of the United States challenge our Congress to confront Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his apartheid policy in the occupied Palestinian territories" http://rescuemideastpolicy.com/ads/ad_4.html Everyone already knows my views concerning Israel so there is really no need for me to bring up counter-points to combat these lies above.
But wait a minute, their website states that their organization is “striving for a balanced Middle East Policy.” Do the excerpts above show this?
As you can see, a biased and anti-Israeli organization presented this video. It was no surprise that an anti-Israeli documentary regarding the USS Liberty was aired, subsequently.
In short, the “documentary” (wrmea.com/archives/march2002/0203104.html),
…dramatically proves, beyond any doubt, that the attack by Israel on June 8, 1967 against the U.S. naval intelligence gathering ship USS Liberty, in which 34 Americans were killed and 171 wounded, was deliberate…
… “Loss of Liberty” makes clear that then-President Lyndon Johnson conspired with Israel and its Israel-First supporters inside the U.S. government to support the “tragic accident” scheme.
In order to understand this issue one must understand the background information regarding this incident. In June 1967, a United States Ship, the Liberty, came too close to the coast of Israel. During those days Israel was in a state of war, warding off attacks of surrounding Arab states who were trying to destroy it. The US ambassador declared in the United Nations that no American ships were in the range of 400 miles from Israel. The National Security Agency, part of the ship’s command, was supposed to give timely orders to the USS Liberty to leave, however, these orders arrived days after the attack.
Eight days later, Israeli Air Force planes and boats attacked the ship, killing 34 and wounding 177. The ship did not sink, and slowly moved crippled to a nearby port. After the incident voices were heard: “Did Israel deliberately attack the USS Liberty?”
Here are the facts: Israel’s understanding was that there were no American ships less than 400 miles off its coast, and as she was at war with Egypt, enemy warships were the only ones thought to be off the coast of Israel. At the time the USS Liberty was bombed, there were explosions on the coast and Israeli command thought it was a naval bombardment from Egypt. It was then that Israel moved to attack what they believed to be an Egyptian ship.
In a bid to attack the ship, Israeli jets were scrambled to the area. The Israeli jets that attacked the Liberty were diverted from other targets, and consequently were armed with napalm rather than iron bombs. In a premeditated and deliberate attack meant to sink a ship, no aviator in the world would choose napalm over iron bombs. In the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor, for example, iron bombs sunk US battleships in minutes, and the Liberty, a converted freighter, was no battleship.
There were ten official US investigations (including five congressional investigations) that concluded there was never any evidence that the attack was made with knowledge that the target was a US ship. Furthermore they concluded that there was substantial evidence the attack was a tragic mistake caused by blunders of both the US and Israel. Seven US presidents, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton, have each accepted the conclusion that the attack was a tragic case of mistaken identity. Since the incident the haters of Israel have tried to use this event to try to pull America and Israel apart. This is nonetheless what this Council for the National Interest has tried to do with this presentation. Fortunately this conspiracy theory that this documentary presented on Tuesday at Cummings Center had few takers.
As you can see this documentary didn’t bring forward (1) the fact Israel mistakenly saw this ship as enemy, due to the state of war it was in and bombs shot out from the same area, (2) the US, days earlier, stated there were no ships within 400-miles radius which the Liberty was in, (3) the type of weapon Israel used to attack the ship was napalm, the wrong kind of weapon to use if one wanted to sink the ship(4) there were 10, including 5 congressional investigations, into the incident all concluding that the attack on the USS Liberty by Israel was a tragic mistake.
This incident should serve as a lesson to the Connecticut College administration and related offices in that it should be more vigilant in who it allows to rent its rooms. Making money is ok, but making money off these kinds of organizations is wrong. What’s next? A National Alliance meeting?
And apparently the Nationalists were willing and able to kill the Socialist (Rabin).
As for China, it has never had a legitimate claim to East Turkestan, Outer Mongolia, or Taiwan.
The unifying factor was nationalism. This particularism is antithetical to communism.
Communists and Nationalists don't like each other much. Nationalist Socialists are generally referred to as Fascists. You're not really saying that Israel is Fascist are you?
So now you want to show your ignorance on political Ideology?
Fascism was created by ex-communist nationalists in Italy like Mussolini. The means of production were partially owned by the government, but were controlled throw shared government-party-company management. I suppose that economic Facism light exists in Israel, but it exists in all corporate Democracies, including the US.
The Socialists in Israel mainly believed in union and government co-ownership of the means of production.
There was a time when Democrats were nationalist. Are you calling them Fascist?
Is government investment in private industry fascism?
I don't believe I claimed that they were. How does this relate to my statement?
In a letter reference SC No. 07445/67 dated July 18, 1967 from Clark Clifford to LBJ Mr. Clifford states in part, "Prior to the attack no inquiry was made by the Israeli Government as to whether there were U.S. flag vessels in the general area of the Eastern Mediterranean adjoining Israel and the United Arab Republic."
You hold that these inquiries were incomplete.
Not true.
We hold not that these inquiries are incomplete but they are not investigations of the attack on the USS Liberty as some have alleged but cannot substantiate.
Even JAG publicly holds that their USNavy Court of Inquiry did not include an investigation of the attack.
Warmest regards
Joe
For me only since 1980 but you couldn't have known that.
We'll continue until the US government finally conducts the investigation of the attack that routinely follows an incident of this kind but -- for reasons as yet unexplained even to those of us who were there -- has been denied the attack on the USS Liberty.
That's the least we can do for our fallen shipmates.
And that would be an accurate statement. Again, this stuff was going down literally on the other side of the planet from Washington--the battle group commander ordered the launch, not MacNamara.
That's where it gets wierd. Perhaps, he was just a bit too general in his denial and he didn't mean to imply that.
No, he's just rebutting the claim by the "Capitol Hill is Israeli-Occupied Territory" crowd that MacNamara, acting on orders from the Zionist Overlords of America, ordered the strike recalled.
Then again, given Cristol's tendency to distort the truth, I don't have a problem believing he denied that any planes were dispatched and recalled.
I don't doubt that the attack on the Liberty was deliberate. However, I do not believe that the Israelis are a bunch of trigger-happy yahoos, either--they are an anomoly in the Middle East, a nation with a somewhat rational agenda. The NSA's reticence as to the Liberty's actual mission--especially when coupled with the cover story they put out via Mr. Ennes' book, said cover story being a complete load of Bravo Sierra--makes me very suspicious of Mr. Ennes' claims that the USS Liberty was just minding its own business when those bad ol' Israelis started bombing them and intended to sink them. WTF were we doing, when were we doing it, and who signed off on the mission tasking? My guess: that material has long since been consigned to the monster shredder at Fort George Meade, because it was a rogue op.
If Mr. Ennes had merely declined to state the mission of the Liberty for "national security reasons," I probably wouldn't be this suspicious. But when he became the conduit for a lie by a national intelligence agency, he lost a big chunk of his credibility.
By the way, what sort of rogue operation are you thinking of? Would it be one that would justify an Israeli attack on the ship? (Likeliest kind of rogue operation to my mind would be an independent decision of the Joint Chiefs that they kept secret from LBJ, just for the purpose of keeping themselves informed about what was going on in the Middle East -- if that's what it was, I don't see how that would justify the attack.)
Hmm. So someone got the word to the White House, and the White House staff got LBJ awake and sober enough to make decisions, and get him on SATCOM before the birds got to the target? Far more believable for 1997 instead of 1967--the Navy communications system was reliable (the message would get there, eventually), but not swift. By the time the message got to Navy Headquarters, the appropriate staffers woken up, and the message passed up through the chain of command, we're talking HOURS, not minutes.
And, conveniently, the only folks who can actually confirm that Geis was told this are LBJ and Geis, who are both conveniently deceased.
By the way, what sort of rogue operation are you thinking of? Would it be one that would justify an Israeli attack on the ship?
Either it did actually justify said attack, or the idea was to make it appear to the Israelis that an attack was justified.
(Likeliest kind of rogue operation to my mind would be an independent decision of the Joint Chiefs that they kept secret from LBJ, just for the purpose of keeping themselves informed about what was going on in the Middle East -- if that's what it was, I don't see how that would justify the attack.)
You're not thinking in sufficiently Byzantine terms. The JCS had little authority over the NSA, and that's where you need to concentrate your thinking. You have to remember that the NSA deliberately cut off the ship from its chain of command--Sixth Fleet could still technically give it orders, but those orders had to reach the ship through NSA-approved and controlled channels, and those channels "mysteriously" broke down right when it was crucial to get the Liberty out of the area, and right when Sixth Fleet was desperately trying to send the ship a message to get out of there.
The NSA is pretty good at working up cover stories. This one was put together in a hurry, and the authors didn't check the relevant facts in the NSA archives--which suggests that the archives were not accessible. The only reason for THAT would be if the op was a rogue one. This wasn't an issue in 1980, when Ennes wrote his book--the only other archive that had the facts was in Moscow. But when the Soviet Union collapsed, so did the cover story. Turns out that the Soviet bombers the Liberty was supposedly monitoring in-flight radio transmissions from were on the ground in Alexandria--way the heck away from the Liberty.
By the way, you still haven't explained what sort of rogue operation you are thinking of. Whether the orders came from the Joint Chiefs or from the NSA, I still don't see what the Liberty could have been doing that would justify the Israeli attack. Could you please explain what you are hinting at. Maybe I am thick, but I don't understand what you're hinting.
Bamford also alleges that the Liberty was attacked to cover up an Israeli atrocity that appears to have been a complete fabrication by the Islamofascists, without any supporting documentation in Egypt. Bamford is not immune to making really boneheaded mistakes.
However, the Joint Staff is a huge bureaucracy--perhaps an officer released a message as a favor to a buddy at the NSA.
By the way, you still haven't explained what sort of rogue operation you are thinking of. Whether the orders came from the Joint Chiefs or from the NSA, I still don't see what the Liberty could have been doing that would justify the Israeli attack. Could you please explain what you are hinting at. Maybe I am thick, but I don't understand what you're hinting.
You have an intelligence-gathering platform operating off of the coast of two nations at war. That's not a problem. They can sit there and gather all manner of intel to their hearts' content.
The question is, what were they DOING with the intel? If they were passing it on to Cairo (even indirectly), that is a bigtime no-no. That's just the same, under international law, as if the US Sixth Fleet steamed up and started supplying close air support to the Egyptians.
In 1973, we resupplied Israel via an airlift. If Egypt and Syria had had enough airpower to throw at the air bridge, and had bagged a few C-5s, well, that would've the fortunes of war--we were aiding a belligerent nation, after all.
There are two possibilities here: either (a) the Liberty was being used to gather intel on the Israelis, whereupon it was sent to Egypt, or (b) the presence of the Liberty was being used to launder some other SIGINT platform's take (SR-71, U-2, ferret satellite come to mind here).
In short, no matter how we slice it, if we decide to stick our noses into an ongoing fight, there's a finite chance that said nose might get punched.
Until you point out such evidence, you're just speculating. And I find it hard to imagine why bureaucrats or military people in the NSA or the Pentagon would want to provide intel to the Egyptians. Remember that the '67 war happened at the height of Nasser's rule in Egypt, when relations between Egypt and America were very strained, and years before we developed closer relations with Egypt.
No you didn't. You simply showed that the Russian Empire hadn't expanded out to those areas yet. The Soviets continued to expand in the same fashion as did the Russian Empire albeit with a more efficient government system in place.
I don't believe that Socialism requires government investment in private companies. Fascism does. The government can control the means of production without owning the companies.
You're not going to find a smoking gun in Dupuy's book (Dupuy was a consultant for the US military until his death in the 1990s, so he was NOT going to come out and say it directly even if he DID know all the sordid details), but he has commented on the Egyptian Army's ability to evade the final blow. Read up some more, including the more recent works on the 1967 war, and you'll put two and two together.
Until you point out such evidence, you're just speculating.
True enough, but it's far more informed speculation.
And I find it hard to imagine why bureaucrats or military people in the NSA or the Pentagon would want to provide intel to the Egyptians.
I don't. But, then again, I don't assume that the US military-intelligence community is a monolithic bloc, instantly obeying every single command from recognized and accredited seniors. The presence of various inter-departmental working groups that included State, Commerce ("follow the money" works any time you find commerce wandering around), and other interested agencies just makes it that much muddier. Lots of stuff gets handled "offline" at these working groups.
Remember that the '67 war happened at the height of Nasser's rule in Egypt, when relations between Egypt and America were very strained, and years before we developed closer relations with Egypt.
We didn't have 100% bad relations with Egypt, or their intelligence services. Nasser was the primus inter pares of the "Non-Aligned Nations" bloc in the UN, and was very used to playing both sides of the street. He did so very effectively. Sadat threw the Soviets out of Egypt in part because he didn't have Nasser's skill in playing the US and USSR off of each other, and the Soviets were trying to turn Egypt into an out-and-out Warsaw Pact member. He figured that the worst that could happen if he cozied up to the US is that the Americans would stick a Coca-Cola bottling plant in downtown Cairo, and not turn his military into a wholly-owned subsidiary :o)
Heck, in 1956, we saved Nasser's a$$ from the Israelis, French, and British. We were perfectly willing to quietly do business with Egypt if it meant that ARAMCO concessions just across the Red Sea would be left to comfortably pump Saudi crude.
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